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Often, when we talk about narrative perspective, we think about the distance between the text and the reader: are we reading in first, second, or third person? What is the distance in time from story to narrator? How close or distant is the narrator from the scene? These are all questions that can be addressed from the reader’s perspective.
But before we can read a text, as writers, we must consider how to represent our characters’ closeness or distance through time and space: a nexus of the physical, temporal, and emotional. Does the story require immediacy, thus little to no retrospection? Or does the story need the perspective of character distance—or even historical distance? Or does the story’s needs land somewhere in between?
What we will find is that some of the most compelling fiction results from a consideration of characters’ bodily experience, ultimately to bring the reader as close to the palpable and atmospheric experience of the characters as possible. This is our goal as writers: to draw the reader fully within.
Participants should come with an example of a work in progress they would like to consider and revise. Models will include recent works by Christina Baker Kline, Rebecca Makkai, and Kirsten Valdez Quade.
Jennifer Solheim's stories and essays have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Pinch, and Poets & Writers. As a writer and literary scholar, she has taught at University of Michigan, Université de Paris VII, and University of Illinois—Chicago, in addition to creative writing workshops at the Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference and StoryStudio Chicago. A Contributing Editor at Fiction Writers Review, she is also the Associate Director of the BookEnds Novel Revision Fellowship of Southampton Arts at Stonybrook University, a program of which she is also an alum.
Jennifer will accept manuscripts for critique. Please see details in our manuscript section on our website, ocww.info
We offer free student memberships at a discounted rate of $5.00 per session. You must send verification of your student status. Please contact Claudia Katz at ckatz17755@aol.com for details.
9-9:30 Socializing
9:30-12 Program
